Obama IS progressive, and he will most likely be re-elected. Welcome to reality.

[Downtown Hound]

65. Your link doesnt work

And I'm sorry, but the sheer fact that we're still waiting for any real prosecution of Wall Street except for a few sacrificial lambs thrown out for us is all the proof I need that Obama has never been serious about going after Wall Street. How about you read up on just how much money Obama has taken from Wall Street, and then come bck to me with fantasies about how Obama is really doing all he can?

Oh and, I just love it how for years everybody on this board called the Bush andminstration fascist and evil because of things like indefinite detention and torture, but give Obama a pass. That shows the hypocricy of many liberals, and why for several years now I've been more inclined to call myself an anarchist.

Oh, and finally, your statement about how the bill expressly prohibits the indefinite detention of American citizens is a pile of horse shit. And I don't care if it exempts American citizens or not. We're supposed to be the bastion of freedom and rights throughout the world. That means that we should set an example and not indefinitely detain ANYBODY without a trail, American or foreign.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/three_myths_about_the_detention_bill/singleton/

Myth #3: U.S. citizens are exempted from this new bill

This is simply false, at least when expressed so definitively and without caveats. The bill is purposely muddled on this issue which is what is enabling the falsehood.

There are two separate indefinite military detention provisions in this bill. The first, Section 1021, authorizes indefinite detention for the broad definition of “covered persons” discussed above in the prior point. And that section does provide that “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” So that section contains a disclaimer regarding an intention to expand detention powers for U.S. citizens, but does so only for the powers vested by that specific section. More important, the exclusion appears to extend only to U.S. citizens “captured or arrested in the United States” — meaning that the powers of indefinite detention vested by that section apply to U.S. citizens captured anywhere abroad (there is some grammatical vagueness on this point, but at the very least, there is a viable argument that the detention power in this section applies to U.S. citizens captured abroad).

But the next section, Section 1022, is a different story. That section specifically deals with a smaller category of people than the broad group covered by 1021: namely, anyone whom the President determines is “a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force” and “participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.” For those persons, section (a) not only authorizes, but requires (absent a Presidential waiver), that they be held “in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.” The section title is “Military Custody for Foreign Al Qaeda Terrorists,” but the definition of who it covers does not exclude U.S. citizens or include any requirement of foreignness.

That section — 1022 — does not contain the broad disclaimer regarding U.S. citizens that 1021 contains. Instead, it simply says that the requirement of military detention does not apply to U.S. citizens, but it does not exclude U.S. citizens from the authority, the option, to hold them in military custody. Here is what it says: